by Jane Cousins
He needed to face that reality and up his campaign to send her not just scurrying out of this room but out of town. Back to where ever they spoke that gorgeous soft sexy accent of hers. Time to power up the leer. Throw a predatory smile into the mix and for openers, maybe he should make a crack about the correlation between librarians and strippers… yeah, something about wondering whether she’d be willing to let the scaffolding substitute as a make shift stripper pole.
Come on man, be smug, be sleazy, be… cruel.
Then several disquieting factors about Cara’s current state hit him like a punch to the gut. The woman was practically swaying with fatigue. She had huge dark circles under her eyes, she was too pale and her eyes were slightly unfocused. She looked so damn fragile. Unexpectedly he found himself angry with her, how could she let herself get in this condition? The woman needed a keeper.
“No offence Angel… but you look like crap. Take a load off and have a drink.” His expression grim, the leering and the predatory grin long forgotten. He grabbed a plastic cup from a stack and started pouring wine.
Cara blinked slowly, her mind moving at a snail’s pace as she processed his words. She thought about making some cutting witty comment. She thought about turning on her heels and storming off. She thought about any number of actions but she was just too tired. On leaden feet she walked over and plonked herself down heavily in the seat across from him and took the proffered cup. Taking a gulp, she sighed, it might be served in plastic but the wine was good.
“Don’t you just have a way with words?” Her tone was flat. She could barely build up enough energy to be annoyed with him.
Even the heat between her legs felt as if it were sputtering like a flame about to be snuffed out. It didn’t seem like she’d be bringing the chaos whammy anytime soon. Which should have had her jumping for joy but the thought of jumping, let alone even moving at the moment, kind of made her want to cry, she felt that weary.
“It’s a gift.” Erik acknowledged with a quirk of his left eyebrow. “What’s up with you? You look as if a gentle breeze would send you ass over tea kettle.”
Cara moaned softly, grinding her teeth together. “Do… not… talk… about… the… wind.”
“Sure… whatever you say. Here, have some more wine.” He picked up the bottle and topped up her cup. If nothing else the wine had at least bought some colour back to her cheeks.
Cara shook her head in bemusement. “I really shouldn’t be talking to you… you generally just end up annoying me.”
Erik hid a frown, he didn’t like the sound of that. Which was kind of stupid, because he had purposefully in the past set out to do just that to Cara Devigne, annoy her, irritate her, scare her off. So why was he peeved to hear that his devious plan was working?
“What are you doing here?” Cara looked around, noting the frame of the stage had been built and that one wooden column had been added already. From floor to ceiling the post was covered with magical creatures. A cheeky fairy half way up winked at her. There was a gnome, yawning. A funny looking troll was caught in the act of sneezing. A Gruffalo dancing, a unicorn flying and so many more she couldn’t count. If she hadn’t been so tired she would have gone over to take a better look. “Did you do that? The carvings?”
“Told you I was handy.” Erik raised his cup her way in a silent toast.
“They’re beautiful.” She couldn’t tell a lie. Cara searched the rest of the room for any additional progress, noting only a large heap of what she could only surmise was equipment covered with a tarpaulin off to one side and beyond that a cot. “You’re sleeping here?”
Erik shook his head. “No, I’m working here.”
“If you’re sleeping here that means you’re living here.”
Erik shrugged, looking decidedly unperturbed by her accusation. “It’s a temporary thing. I’m just avoiding someone… until they calm down.”
Cara rolled her eyes. “If your baby-mama arrives at the front desk looking for you I am totally printing her out a map with directions on where to find you.”
“Whoa, whoa, no baby… no baby-mama… absolutely no potential mother of my future spawn on the horizon.” Why the hell was he being so defensive?
Cara took another sip of wine. “You’re seriously trying to tell me that it’s not some poor woman trying to track you down because you were being a jerk?”
“No… I mean, yes it is a woman, but not in the way you mean. And I wasn’t a jerk…” He thought back to the horrified expression on his mother’s face. “Okay, maybe a bit of a jerk, but there were circumstances… justifiable circumstances.”
Cara was kind of enjoying watching Erik squirm, plus the alcohol hitting her empty stomach was making her feel warm and reckless. “Typical man… it was her fault right? She made you do it? You made her promises to get what you wanted, which you had absolutely no intention of keeping, and then you’re surprised when the woman in question takes umbrage and calls you on it.”
Erik laughed. “There were no promises made or broken. I’m talking about my mother, okay. It’s my mother I’m hiding from.”
“Your mother?”
“Why did you use that tone? I have a mother. Everyone has a mother.”
“I just…” Cara shook her head. “I suppose I imagined that your mother would think the sun rose and set on you and that you could do no wrong.”
“Ah, if only we could go back to those days. My mother is a lovely woman, don’t get me wrong, but in the last few years she’s become a little obsessed with the idea of getting her hands on some grandbabies.”
“What’s holding you back from fulfilling your part of the deal?” She took another sip of wine, laughing into it. “Performance issues?” Who knew she was such a sparkling wit when she drank? Not her.
Erik’s cobalt blue eyes shon with heat and intent as his gaze trailed ever so slowly down over her primly braided hair, over her soft puckered lips and came to rest on the upper most pearl button of her cardigan.
A wave of heat suffused Cara. Her cheeks felt flushed, her breasts heavy and that pulse between her legs had strengthen slightly and was mirroring the fast beat of her heart. Oh my, when Erik looked at her like that she wanted to melt… hiccup… oops, she giggled, her hand flying up to cover her mouth.
Erik grinned, then laughed out loud. Cara was so damn gorgeous, even her hiccups were all kinds of cute and that giggle, if possible it made his cock even harder. It wasn’t the high pitched girly fake giggles he’d been subjected to in the past, it was a delightfully husky genuine peel of amusement. It made him want to discover where Cara was ticklish and make her giggle again.
“So what did you do?”
“Do?” Goddess, he could think of a thousand things he wanted to do with Cara Devigne and every single one of them started with him chewing those pearl buttons right off her cardigan.
“Your mother? Why is she angry with you?”
“She keeps throwing single women at me… filling my art classes with potential prospects, turning up at my house with carefully selected baby-mama candidates in tow.”
“Carefully selected?” Cara was insanely curious, she couldn’t help but think with Erik’s penchant for staring at her chest that breast size would have to be at the top of his mother’s check list. “I’m assuming the list goes something like breasts, beauty and baby-making potential.”
Erik tried to pull up a mental picture of one of his mother’s candidates; difficult with the image of naked Cara overlaying everything and the fact that usually when his mother appeared with a woman in tow he was generally busy running in the opposite direction. “Actually, I believe my mother thinks having a common intellectual interest is the most important basis for a marriage… all the women she keeps throwing at me have that angst ridden artistic air about them. Kind of strange really, since my parent’s marriage isn’t based upon any intellectual shared interests.”
They were getting off topic but Cara just had to ask. “What is your parent’
s marriage based upon?”
Erik grinned. “Sex. Lots and lots of sex.”
Um, right… he so had to be teasing her, more immediate, it was a topic she wanted to stay well away from when it came to Erik. “So… you still haven’t told me precisely what you did to upset your mother?” Cara suppressed a yawn, the toasty heated room and the wine were going straight to her head.
“Tell you what Angel. You tell me what’s got you so overwhelmed and sleep deprived and I’ll share my tale of woe with you.”
Cara absently chewed on her bottom lip in consideration. They did say a burden shared was a burden halved, of course that might just be the alcohol on an empty stomach talking. It didn’t help matters that when the man wasn’t leering at her or smiling wolfishly at her breasts he looked not just painfully gorgeous but intensely sincere. Damn him, before she could filter her response she was opening her mouth.
“Firstly, these wind storms happening every night are just not natural… I don’t mean just a weird anomaly, I mean downright weird with a spoon full of eerie on top. There’s something just not… normal about them.” She tossed back the last of her wine, acknowledging with a small nod of her head as Erik leaned over to refill her cup. Just a little bit more couldn’t hurt and she felt so relaxed, warm and for the first time in days she felt safe. “Though I’m probably just imaging it… the wind thing… the moaning… and then there’s the whole God thing…”
“God thing? You’re having a crisis of faith?”
“No! Three weeks ago I was happily skipping through life generally at peace with the idea that there was one mystical creator responsible for the universe, mankind and all the squirrels and such.”
“Squirrels?” Erik frowned. They’d started off with unnatural winds, veered off into religious philosophy and somehow the topic of squirrels was now on the table.
“Forget I said squirrels… why aren’t there squirrels in Australia?” Oh, was the room starting to spin.
“I think you’re getting off topic, you were saying about the God thing?”
Cara blinked, pushing a hand back through her hair, snagging the rubber band at the end of her braid and tugging it free. “I’m related to one. Can you believe that? It was bad enough thinking I was paranoid, going crazy or maybe just cursed, but to find out Gods are real and that I’m related to one… life sucks lemons and I’ve run out of tequila and salt.”
Erik laughed. “It can’t be that bad. I’m related to a God, and yes he’s gruff, grumpy, a major know-it-all and the stories he tells… over and over again, the blood, the decapitations, the women he’s had. It’s enough to make you take a hot poker to your ear, but in the big scheme of things… it only affects you as much as you let it.”
“Hah, easy for you to say. You’re not going around opening up sinkholes that swallow whole city blocks, destroying apartment buildings belonging to slumlords or setting toupees on fire.”
Erik’s eyes widened in surprise. “Just which God are you related to?” He watched, hiding his amusement as Cara looked first to her left, then to her right before leaning over slightly to whisper her answer.
“Apex… I mean Apep.” She covered her mouth as another hiccup unexpectedly emerged.
“The God of Chaos? I knew I wasn’t imaging things, it’s because of you, isn’t it? The sign hitting my head, the platform collapsing, that screwdriver and those pot plants getting loose.”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby. It’s not like you were hurt or anything…”
“But someone will be if you don’t get a handle on it Cara. Angel, you’re a walking disaster waiting to happen.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Cara blinked away moisture, she would not cry. “You should stay away from me, in all likelihood I’ll end up getting you killed.” She frowned fleetingly, for some reason Erik found her last statement highly amusing, chuckling deeply. “I’m serious… and my powers act really strange around you… different.”
Erik froze. “Different good or different bad?”
“Yes to both.”
Erik shook his head in disgust, magic, it was too often as inexplicable as snow falling on a clear blue sky day. “So we have the… eerie winds, the being related to a God thing… anything else?” He lifted his cup to drain the last of the wine.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Cara asked with sudden suspicion. “You haven’t even looked at my breasts once since I sat down? Are you sick?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I just don’t believe in kicking a person when they’re down.” He watched her eyes drift shut for a moment. “I could call for a taxi to drive you home?”
Cara shuddered, her arms instinctively wrapping around her upper body. “I can’t go out there… but you know…” She stopped talking for a moment as she got unsteadily to her feet, Erik quickly followed her example, ready to catch her if she fell.
“What do I know?”
Cara’s nose wrinkled up as she frowned. “I don’t know, what do you know?” Hmm, where had she been going? Oh, the break room and the nice comfy couch. “Oh, I forgot…” Her left knee suddenly felt weak and she listed to the side. “Oof.” She gasped as her nose hit Erik’s hard muscular chest as he reached out and grabbed her. “Ouch.” She rubbed her nose with one hand and then she reached over and rubbed Erik’s chest, through the t-shirt, where her nose had made contact.
“What are you doing?” Erik looked down as her finger rubbed the spot on his chest where her nose had made contact, back and forth, every nerve ending he had lighting up like a fire cracker.
Cara eyed her finger, it was kind of hypnotic, the feel of his hot flesh through the t-shirt, how hard the planes of muscles of his chest were. She blinked slowly and finally looking up at him, he’d asked her a question… “Oh, I thought I might have given you an ouchie where my nose smooshed into you.”
Erik grabbed her hand, locking it in place. Damn, if she kept rubbing him he’d catch fire, be consumed. And right at that moment, with her so close, he was trying to remember why that would be a bad thing.
He thought about kissing her, touching her, unwrapping the plain packaging to reveal the golden ticket to ride underneath but he couldn’t escape the fact she was almost weaving on her feet from fatigue and the two glasses of wine he’d pushed on her to relax hadn’t done a damn thing for her co-ordination. As she attempted to take a step back, she stumbled and fell against him once more, nose first, lips second, puckering in surprise, almost as if she’d kissed his chest through the material of his shirt.
Damn, he grabbed her securely by the upper arms, Goddess, he held back a groan as her scent wrapped around his senses. Panicked by his reaction he was tempted to thrust her away but then she issued that husky giggle… looking up at him smiling. And it was all he could do not to crush her to his chest and never let her go.
“Sorry…” Cara smiled up at him, laughing at herself as the room around her dipped and swayed. “I keep smooshing into you… probably because there’s so much of you… not super-secret soldier project size but still… massive, like a planet with a huge centre of gravity.”
“When’s the last time you had something to eat?”
Cara felt the room lurch around her, instinctively bringing a hand up to clutch at Erik’s waist… hmmm, hard. “Hmmm?”
“Eat?”
“Oh, who can eat? Everything tastes like sand.”
He had no idea how her tired, slightly buzzed mind was working so he ignored her, just changing his grip on her arms to cup her by the elbows so she wouldn’t collapse against him again. He didn’t think he’d be able to withstand another soft press of her curvaceous body.
“Hey… you never told me what you did exactly to upset your mother.”
“How about I tell you another time, when you’re sober enough to remember my answer?”
“Okeydokey… why is the room spinning? That’s not good is it?”
“Generally no. How about you take a short rest on the cot over here?”
“I won’t sleep.” Cara warned, letting him steer her over to the low fold out camping bed. “I never sleep anymore… and I’m so tired.”
“I know you are Angel. Just lie down for a while until the room stops spinning.” He helped her to sit down, plucking off her glasses he gently pushed her down.
Instantly Cara curled onto her side, facing him. “I don’t want to be related to a God…”
“Can’t pick your relatives I’m afraid. You can only make the best of a bad situation.” He pulled off her shoes, then grabbed the light-weight blanket and covered her.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” She pushed the blanket away, too hot.
Erik smiled ruefully, staring down at her. “Because you won’t remember any of this tomorrow.”
Cara’s eyes drifted shut even as he watched, then fluttered open as a particularly strong gust of wind rattled the windows. On quick feet Erik strode over and turned the volume of the music up. Pleased to note that instantly Cara relaxed once more, the frown disappearing from her beautiful face.
Damn, now what was he supposed to do? Standing several feet away he couldn’t seem to shift his focus on to anything other than Cara’s beautiful peaceful features.
Of their own accord his fingers reached out, pulling back the tarpaulin covering the unfinished marble. He shouldn’t. His hands ached, his back muscles protested his every move but the temptation was too great, and with his model present, with the luxury of being able to study her from different angles he realised that his mental snapshot hadn’t allowed for the gentle slope of her cheekbones or the sharp curve of her jaw.
With chisel and hammer in hand he went to work, swept away with the need to transfer the perfection of the beautiful Angel before him into a piece of art that he would always have near to treasure, worship, caress… when he couldn’t allow himself the reality.
Chapter Eleven
Cara let out a small groan, ouch. Sitting up she cradled her head in her hands before giving in to the overwhelming need to open her eyes and find out where the hell she was. What had happened last night?